The Week That Was 030225: The 97th Oscars!

The Oscars

Hey, the Oscars were Sunday! 

This was a weird year for movies (in Oscars-terms) as the industry as a whole is still recovering from the twin blows of the pandemic and the strikes, while continuing to wage an unending battle against the encroachment of streamers (more on that below). The show itself, however, was mostly typical and mostly entertaining.

I am an Elder Millennial, so Conan O'Brien's schtick is right in my wheelhouse (I've never been a devout follower of late night shows, but c'mon, The Simpsons is my favorite TV show and he wrote some of the best episodes). His jokes landed for the most part, and struck the right balance of "pointed but not mean" (his handling of the elephant-in-the-room that was Karla Sofia Gascon was probably as good as it could have been). The "we're not going to waste your time" musical number (coming after the show opened with a musical number) was the right amount of cheeky fun. John Lithgow's disappointed face was a hoot. And the recurring bit with the sandworm from Dune (along with the knowing acknowledgement that when you pay for a prop like that, you're not going to just use it only once) was the perfect sort of "so dumb it's funny" bit and, thankfully, it didn't overstay its welcome. 

Having at least some clips from nominated films/performances back is appreciated as well. I am by no means a run-time stickler (as I often say to Doctor Bitz, who cares how long it is? It's a celebration of movies! Let's start and 10AM and have it run for 12 hours!), but pacing is still important, and for the most part, they paced things out pretty nicely, with the only drag coming just before they started the last run of final awards (which is when one usually hits). Less effective was the "presenter on nominees" bit. I like the "here's five actors to talk about each nominee" routine, which was originally planned for this ceremony, but likely got scrapped because of the Karla Sofia Gascon of it all. The on-the-fly makeshift version of it, having one presentation expound on the skills of the five nominees individually, was less effective and felt more forced, which made it drag more (I did like that they extended the bit to some of the craft categories this year — more of that in the future!)

Also frustrating: no Original Song performances. Clearly, these were edged out in favor of the more known (and popular) but not nominated Wizard of Oz-inspired performances, and possibly because two of the five nominees were from Emilia Perez and the producers — if not necessarily the Academy — wanted to keep that movie on the DL as much as possible. But in many cases, this show is the only time the vast majority of people will hear those songs, and it's a shame they didn't get a chance to be heard. To be clear, I liked the Wicked-inspired opening, and I dug the James Bond tribute (I guess that was prompted by the retirement of the Broccolis?); just give us those AND the songs. Like I said, I'm not a stickler for show length. 

The producers also need to stop overthinking the In Memorian montage. I get it, they want something visually captivating for the in-house crowd. But that doesn't mean they need to broadcast it that way. Just zoom in on the screen and let those of watching at home view the montage while the music plays. We don't need to see the proscenium, or the cut to the orchestra, or the choir in the background, and we certainly don't need to see the montage moving around the space.

In terms of the winners, I have few complaints, though this was a year where there weren't many nominated films I was deeply passionate about (Dune Part 2 is probably my favorite of the best pic noms, but that's just because I'm a luddite who tends to favor more mainstream fare; I liked Anora a lot and am neither surprised nor disappointed it won). I am always up for witnessing a bit of Oscar history though, so it was fun to see Sean Baker become the first person to win four Oscars for one movie (file that one away for future trivia nights). Anora is also arguably the first rom-com to win since, what, Annie Hall in '77?

Speaking of Baker, in one of his acceptance speeches, he spoke to the importance of the theatrical experience, saying, "watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together. … In a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever." I certainly don't disagree with that sentiment — my wife and I still go the theater as often as we can, and take our kids when applicable — and I also understand Baker is speaking at least somewhat to a generational divide I fall on the "right" side of. But also, at least for some of us, it's not for lack of trying. I love going to movies, but I have two kids, and only so much time and so many babysitting opportunities to use on seeing movies in a theater. Not everyone who enjoys movies has the luxury of being a professional film reviewer/podcaster or a single twenty-something. Sometimes, the best we can do is watch a movie at home, and the ability to do so with greater frequency and options (at least of newer stuff) isn't an inherently bad thing.

I guess all I'm saying is, while I absolutely want theaters to stick around and the movie-going experience to continue, I also don't want to go back to a world where the only way I can see all the nominated films is to lineup a babysitter and drop twenty bucks a pop for each and every one or be SOL, instead of at least being able to mix and match some theatrical movies with streaming ones.

That said, as someone watching with no small amount of schadenfreude as the streaming ecosystem that disrupted the cable model finds itself slowly inventing...the cable model and hasn't able to see The Brutalist despite making sitter arrangements because too few theaters were playing it, Conan's "Cinema Streams video" was a delight. 

Conclave & A Complete Unknown

Contrary to the rant above, my wife and I did arrange a babysitter for Saturday so we could knock out a couple more nominees before the show on Sunday. With the The Brutalist an unfeasible option and neither of us quite in the mood for the body horror of The Substance, we went with A Complete Unknown and Conclave (despite the fact we'd started Conclave via Peacock the night before and quickly fallen asleep; no knock on the film, it's just not the sort of thing you should start at 10:15PM on a Friday night after a long week while battling colds). 

Of the two, I enjoyed Conclave more. Rewatchability isn't the most important thing to a movie, but it's one of the few nominees this year that I feel likely to revisit at some point in time (Anora is great, but I doubt I'm going to see it running on TNT or even the IFC on some rainy Saturday afternoon or late Wednesday night). Ralph Fiennes' sort of overwhelming weariness throughout the whole thing, like a father trying to get his kids out the door on time, resonates (am I projecting? Maybe). The way the crispness of the production design and costuming and even editing mimicked the precision and repetition of the rituals being performed was clever. I knew going in there was a twist to the end (but not what the twist was), which had the unfortunate effect of making me look for and anticipate a bigger twist than there ended up being. But all in all, a quiet yet compelling thriller, a throwback to something that used to be much more common. 

A Complete Unknown is a pretty standard musical biopic, albeit one of the better examples of the form, not only because of great Chalamet performance at its center but because of the way James Mangold sort of takes the two forms of biopics — the "survey" approach that covers the entire life, and the "zero in on one incident/moment" approach — and does them both. It's about Dylan's rise, domination of folk, and eventual evolution past it, but that occurs over a long enough period that it gets to have both specificity and sweep of subject. It also definitely seems like a movie that Has Something To Say (not all biopics do) but I haven't quite puzzled out what, exactly, yet. 

On the own hand, Dylan is presented as both the hero of the story and a disruptive force, the conservatives trying to gatekeep folk music and keep it from evolving are people in need of disruption. Yet at the same time, it also kind of argues that the disruption isn't inherently good, as the final Newport concert goes from a collective celebration to an angry near-riot because of Dylan, while at the same time, making it clear that the even traditional folk artists like Edward Norton's Pete Seeger were socially progressive advocates for justice, change, and diversity. In the end, it seems like the movie is saying Dylan was right all along in pushing the stodgy establishment (with Woody Guthrie, the film's symbol of capital-F folk music telling Dylan to keep his harmonica), or at least that the true spirit of folk is being true to oneself. Yet the movie also doesn't shy away from showing that its main character is more or less an asshole all throughout. I still haven't decided if that sort of mixed messaging is a sign of complexity, or poor storytelling. 

Review Round-Up

Just a couple Comicon reviews this last week, including the second issue of Charles Soule's Eight Billion Genies follow-up Lucky Devils, and Wolverine #6.

What Else? 

What I'm Playing 

Marvel Snap debuted its new in-game event, the "Sanctum Showdown", last week. I wrote up my thoughts on this largely frustrating event (tl:dr - don't sell an event on how great the rewards are, then structure the event to make the rewards unattainable at worst and a complete and utter boring grind to attain at best). 

What I'm Reading

Every year for the last several years, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair does a recap of the Oscars ceremony from twenty years ago. It's become an annual Oscar weekend tradition for me to read each new one, and this year's, looking at the 2005 ceremony in which Clint Eastwood became the latest actor-turned director to deny Martin Scorsese an Oscar with Million Dollar Baby, doesn't disappoint.